December, 2013

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Framework Benchmarks Round 8

TechEmpower

'Merry Christmas web framework performance aficionados! What better way to celebrate the holidays than by cheering on your favorites as they race through a variety of application fundamentals in the biggest web platform grudge match of the season? We certainly can''t think of anything more festive. Now at 90 frameworks and 230 permutations (variations on configuration), Round 8 has something for everyone.

Framework 534
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How DogVacay Literally Saved my Thanksgiving

Both Sides of the Table

'Without DogVacay my Thanksgiving would have been ruined. That’s a fact. And I’m not an investor. I just had to tell this story. It’s a great one about entrepreneurship, friendship and the collaborative economy that is helping families in need across the world. The Background. Every year my family meets in San Diego for Thanksgiving.

San Diego 344
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Moneyball and the Investment Readiness Level-video

Steve Blank

'Eric Ries was kind enough to invite me to speak at his Lean Startup Conference. In the talk I reviewed the basic components of the Lean Startup and described how we teach it. I observed that now that we’ve built software to instrument and monitor the progress of new ventures (using LaunchPad Central ), that we are entering the world of evidence-based entrepreneurship and the Investment Readiness Level.

Video 279
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Startup Location Is Still A Critical Success Factor

Startup Professionals Musings

'Even in this age of globalization and virtualization, the geographic area where you choose to live and work can still make or break your startup business. I still have to tell some entrepreneurs that even with the best idea, they have to move to Silicon Valley to find the investors they need, or they need to move to the U.S. get the attention of the market they choose.

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Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

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10 Companies Want To Show You The Money

YoungUpstarts

'by Pabla Ayala, cofounder of pFunk Media Is your holiday gift-giving list becoming longer and pricier than your current wallet can handle? Make extra cash to help with those expensive holiday costs and maybe even help you put some money back in your wallet so you don’t start the New Year off broke! Here are 10 online platforms that want you to show you the money: 1.

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Enterprise Adoption Laggards?

deal architect

'The pace of technology innovation continues to accelerate - New Florence just had a record month of posts. But innovation without adoption = duds. This Harvard Business Review article and the graph from it below show technologies are getting adopted.

More Trending

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How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle and Avoid Wasting Time

Both Sides of the Table

'One of the questions I’m most often asked by CEOs is how to hire sales people. I’ve written a lot about recruiting and hiring at startups including my controversial post on whom not to hire and my rapid response to the flame war. I’ve also written extensively on sales and on which sales execs to hire and how to think about the different kinds of sales leaders.

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How Do You Want to Spend Your Next 4 Years of Your Life?

Steve Blank

'As our Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences class winds down, a good number of the 26 teams are trying to figure out whether they should go forward to turn their class project into a business. Given that we’ve been emphasizing Evidence-based entrepreneurship and the Investment Readiness Level , I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when someone asked, “After we figure all this data out, should we pursue our idea based on the numbers?”.

Cofounder 325
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5 Keys Steps For Every Startup Roadmap To Revenue

Startup Professionals Musings

'Entrepreneurs always work hard to create an innovative product or service, but often count on standard seller marketing for sales. But the reality is that sellers are no longer in charge of the customer buying process. Reports suggest that 90% of today’s shoppers skip marketing pitches, to research online before they buy, and over 50% check user reviews before making a decision.

Revenue 263
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Are You Penny-Pinching Yourself Out of Business? Five Expenses You Should Never, Ever Skimp On.

YoungUpstarts

'By Sean C. Castrina, author of “ 8 Unbreakable Rules For Business Start-Up Success “ If you’re bootstrapping your own business, you know all about doing more with less. The ability to stretch a budget is a survival skill, especially in those cash-strapped early days. And because you know you’re never much more than a bad quarter or an unexpected expense away from closing your doors, you’re always looking for new ways to save money.

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The Smartest Entrepreneurs Bootstrap Their Startup

Gust

'Image via niaje.com and www.yec.co. There is so much written these days about how to attract investors that most entrepreneurs “assume” they need funding, and don’t even consider a plan for “bootstrapping,” or self-financing their startup. Yet, according to many sources , over 90 percent of all businesses are started and grown with no equity financing, and many others would have been better off without it.

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Blogging is the new resume: Why less is not always more

The Next Web

'Ryan Hoover is the co-creator of Product Hunt , creator of Startup Edition , and instructor at Tradecraft. Follow him at @rrhoover or visit his blog to read more about startups and product design. Can we all agree resumes are crummy? Can you really communicate your life’s accomplishments and skill-set through an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper? Does anyone even read your resume anyway?

Stealth 167
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Building smarter software: Proactively deliver insights

For Entrepreneurs

'Three years ago I spent a lot of time looking at SaaS business intelligence companies. I loved what I saw in the demos: easy data connections, slick looking graphs, powerful drill down tools and custom dashboards made the tools look like no-brainers. And then I began my diligence calls. All of these bells and whistles […].

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My 13 Favorite Alternative Funding Options of 2013

Up and Running

'This has been a big year for advances in business funding. The JOBS Act opened doors for major innovations in crowdfunding , and dozens of new funding websites have popped up to address the needs of specific types of businesses. Whether you’re a nonprofit, a new small business, a high-tech startup, or an up-and-running company, and whether you’re looking for a loan or a grant or an equity-sharing arrangement, there is an option for you.

Kenya 119
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Smart Entrepreneurs Anticipate Market Segment Gaps

Startup Professionals Musings

'Everyone in the business world has heard of the old bestseller by Geoffrey A. Moore titled “ Crossing the Chasm ,” but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Most investors and startup professionals expand this concept of focus to apply to key issues of every aspect of strategic and tactical planning in a startup.

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The Future Is Enchanted Objects, Not Glass Slabs

Feld Thoughts

'On Saturday, I read the final draft of a magnificent book by David Rose. The book is titled Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things. I’ve known David for many years. I was a huge fan and an early customer, but not an investor, in one of his companies ( Ambient Devices ) and we share a lot of friends and colleagues from MIT and the Media Lab.

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Our year in review: a look back and ahead

Version One Ventures

'As the year comes to an end, it’s a natural time to pause and reflect on what we’ve done and where we’re headed. 2013 was busy for Version One. We made 3 new investments: Figure 1 , a photo-sharing network for medical professionals; Upverter , a cloud-based hardware engineering platform; and one unannounced investment. These new investments bring the total number of portfolio companies to 14.

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How to get creative with your domain name registration

The Next Web

'Amanda Foley is a writer and marketing associate at audience.io , a New York and London based audience development company. Naming your startup can be one of the most difficult challenges for an entrepreneur. Not only do you need to come up with something relevant, but you have the added stress of worrying about the verb effect, if it’s easy-to-spell, globally understandable, catchy, memorable and gives off the right impression.

Naming 166
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What I noticed in 2013

Start Up Blog

'I’ve been reviewing my notepad from 2013 and thought I’d share my insights into what’s changed and the big issues from my perspective in startups, business and technology. Technology is no longer a thing: It’s almost not worth mentioning now it is so ensconced in human life. Business, political dn social activities are intertwined in technology as an organism.

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We’re looking for entrepreneurs to join us at Forward Partners

The Equity Kicker

'As I’ve written before here at Forward Partners we work with entrepreneurs to help them launch and scale their companies in two different ways. About half our investments are in companies at true startup stage – i.e. founder + idea, nothing built – and half are in slightly more mature companies, up to late seed stage when there are maybe 5-10 people in the company.

Partner 117
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The Smartest Entrepreneurs Bootstrap Their Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

'There is so much written these days about how to attract investors that most entrepreneurs “assume” they need funding, and don’t even consider a plan for “bootstrapping,” or self-financing their startup. Yet, according to many sources , over 90 percent of all businesses are started and grown with no equity financing, and many others would have been better off without it.

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Reflections On 2013, What Walter Discovered About Starting A Business After Listening To Podcast Interviews, And Our Plans For 2014

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

'Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes. In episode #12 of Everything Entrepreneurship , the final for 2013, Walter and I look back over the previous year and talk about some of the most significant moments in both our personal and business lives. We review how these events changed us and changed the direction we took during the year. We also … Read the rest of this entry » The post Reflections On 2013, What Walter Discovered About Starting A Business After Listening To Podcast Interview

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Don’t be an Annoying VC Associate

Rob Go

'Ed Zimmerman wrote a nice article in the WSJ about the value of VC Associates. It’s a great read, and as a former VC associate, I agree with many of his points. But VC associates continue to get a bad reputation, and I totally understand why. It’s not that VC associates are bad or ineffective. But some are. And almost all are prone to some bad behavior at least sometimes.

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How to create a sustainable social media strategy for your startup

The Next Web

'This post is brought to you by Simply Measured. If you’re running a startup, working for one, or just considering turning an idea into a company, calling your work life “busy” is a severe understatement. Along with building a product and a company, you need to build social momentum and buzz. Even a side project or personal branding ventures can resemble a full time job.

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In Search of Digital Excellence

deal architect

'When Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO of Software AG invited me to help with his book The Digital Enterprise: The Moves and Motives of the Digital Leaders, he invoked Tom Peters and his best seller In Search of Excellence. Karl-Heinz said we.

Search 372
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How to Control Your Board Discussion and Avoid Chaos

Both Sides of the Table

'Recently I wrote the first post in a series on board meetings, entitled, “ Why You’re Not Getting the Most out of Your Board ,” which focused on the need to prepare properly, set good objectives and discuss mostly strategic topics. Even if you follow this game plan meticulously your board meeting can be taken off course by well-intentioned board members who lead you down a rate hole.

Mexico 312
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10 Metrics To Drive Your Annual Business Review

Startup Professionals Musings

'Entrepreneurs have no trouble focusing on how to build a product, and the good ones know how to find and nurture those first critical customers. Many, however, don’t know how to take their small business to the next level. What I’m talking about here is a level of discipline and skill necessary to collect and analyze the relevant business data, known as metrics.

Metrics 252
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How To Compete In A Commoditized Market Like Hosting, Should Yaro Start A Blogging Service And Is Buying A Podcast A Growth Strategy

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

'Subscribe to this Podcast in iTunes. Welcome to Everything Entrepreneurship with Walter and Yaro , episode #8. This episode we focus on Q&A, with Colin Gray from ThePodcastHost.com asking us about his podcast hosting service and how it could be a viable business when hosting is so commoditized. Jared Easley from StarveTheDoubts.com sent me an email asking whether you could … Read the rest of this entry » The post How To Compete In A Commoditized Market Like Hosting, Should Yaro

Hosting 83
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When Customers Make You Smarter

Steve Blank

'We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. Here’s what happened when an extraordinary Digital Health team gained several critical insights about their business model. The first was reducing what they thought was a five-sided market to a simpler two-sided one. But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their r

Customer 323
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Millennials got Mail: 6 ways to successfully target the ‘always connected’ generation through email

The Next Web

'Toss around the term “Millennial” in your favorite search engine and it brings up perceived characteristics attributed to the generation. There’s the how-to on working with them, why not to hire them, how they are narcissistic and selfish (yet still love/rely on their families), and most of all, their “always connected” obsession. The U.S. age group varies according to source, but the generation is roughly composed of those born between 1981 and 2000, according to Pew Research.

Email 141
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Indian outsourcing at the cross roads

deal architect

'Vivek Wadhwa writes “Why I have become pessimistic about Indian IT” “It is not that Indian outsourcers have become less capable of servicing Western needs. It is that their customer base—the CIO and IT department—is in decline.” He is right.

Offshore 337
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7 Stages of a Successful Consulting System

Duct Tape Marketing

'7 Stages of a Successful Consulting System written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing I like systems. I think in systems and, even when I don’t realize I’m doing it, I work in systems. There’s something both comforting and efficient about working with familiar patterns. photo credit: brendonhatcher via photopin cc.

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Startup Early Execution Can Be Better Than Planning

Startup Professionals Musings

'I know entrepreneurs who have suffered from the dreaded premature execution syndrome often associated with the ready-fire-aim approach. Yet I believe that many more have benefited from this approach, especially in early startup stages. If your product is highly innovative, and speed to market is critical, you won’t get it right the first time anyway, no matter how cautiously you plan.

Startup 250
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Stop chopping yourself to pieces

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

'My personal experience, confirmed by numerous studies, is: It’s faster to process email in batches rather than checking in 30 times/day. Humans cannot multi-task, they just complete both tasks slower, and with lower quality. (Texting and driving, meetings and email) The best ideas, new ideas, come in a flash when you’re not working. You are most productive when you’re “in the zone,” a contiguous period of focus, without interruption by human or computer.

Flash 316
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Talented Women: Please Do Not Quit.

YoungUpstarts

'by Sr amana Mitra, founder of One Million by One Million . Five years ago, a good friend of mine hanged herself. I had coffee with her the day before. She was married to a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who ran a couple of major companies and had a brilliant career. She did not work. But on the surface, they had everything. I knew both of them well.

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What I learned about leadership from watching ‘The Walking Dead’

The Next Web

'Danny Boice is the co-founder and CTO of Speek – a 500 Startups-funded startup that let’s users do conference calls with a simple link rather than using phone numbers and PINs. I recently started watching “The Walking Dead” (I know, I know, late to the party). I’ve been mainlining the show relentlessly on Netflix and am now on Season 3. From the very beginning, I’ve been struck by how similar is the plight of Rick—the blue-steely-eyed sheriff’s deputy bravely leading his band of non-zombies—to